Clarion Partners LLC agreed to buy a 108-year-old office tower near Manhattan’s Union Squarefor $225 million, more than twice what it sold for three years ago, as demand in the area surges, a person familiar with the deal said.Clarion, a New York-based manager of real estate investment funds, has a contract to purchase100-104 Fifth Ave. from Kaufman Organization and Invesco Ltd. (IVZ), said the person, who asked not to be identified because the negotiations are private. The sellers paid $93.5 million for the 17-story, 270,000-square-foot (25,000-square-meter) property in 2010.The price reflects the premium buyers will pay for offices in midtown south, the areas roughly between 30th and Canal streets where growing technology, media and fashion companies have driven the vacancy rate to the lowest in the U.S. The deal values the building at more than $800 a square foot, a price at which only “a handful” of properties have sold since the real estate crash, said Ben Thypin, director of market analysis for New York-based research firm Real Capital Analytics Inc.“Employers want to be in midtown south because their employees want to be there,” Thypin said. “As a result, employers are willing to pay significantly higher rents in midtown south than they have historically and, in turn, the anticipation of further rent growth makes midtown south an attractive place to buy property.”Read More: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-28/clarion-said-to-buy-midtown-south-tower-for-225-million.html

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Ben Carlos Thypin

I am currently the co-founder of Quantierra, the world's first data driven real estate brokerage and investment manager. In my former life as Director of Market Analysis at Real Capital Analytics, I worked with press outlets large and small to provide them with great data and insightful commentary. Here are some of the results of this collaboration. For the rest, please check out the News Archive.